This is how University of Minnesota biochemistry professor Gianluigi Veglia often talked to and about the students and employees in his laboratory, according to two sexual misconduct investigations. His name is well known in his field. His curriculum vitae is 39 honor-filled pages long and meticulously lists the millions of dollars in grant funding he’s received through the years. He has taught at the U of M, which has shared in the bounty of his grant money, since 2000.

“Take off your shirt so I can just see a little.”

Accusers and witnesses detail many other instances of misconduct. Among the allegations: He told lab members he only hired them for their looks; he suggested women’s presentations would be more effective if they dressed in more revealing clothing; he told his female lab members (whom he frequently called “Veglia chicks”) to flirt with prospective students to entice them to join the lab; he even threatened to withhold Ph.D.s if complaints were filed.

Veglia told investigators he simply hadn’t made many of these comments. Others, he said, were misinterpreted jokes or the vengeful lies of disgruntled and unsuccessful students. He declined to comment for this story.

...Following the investigation, he was given typical sanctions, like attending sexual harassment training and meeting with his boss. A bigger blow was his removal as the director of the university’s Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Center and the accompanying annual salary bonus of $10,000.

Other sanctions sound tough but are not as harsh as they might seem.

For example, Veglia isn’t allowed to supervise undergraduate students through the 2019-20 school year and was also removed from the two graduate programs he taught in, with his readmission to the programs contingent on his conduct, including “no reports of sexual harassment.”

Veglia can still do research with graduate students and others, which means his federal funding will keep flowing into the school....

It seems like the most vocal supporters of womens' issues on my Facebook are academics, but they're willing to turn their beliefs on and off when it behooves their careers to do so. One minute, it's "rah-rah, women in STEM, yay," but the next minute, it's "Professor So-and-So brings in a lot of funding, so we're going to pretend we didn't see that complaint."

Veglia would have either been fired or had his behavior nipped in the bud early in any industry job with a real HR department. Only in academia, or at a tiny company with no HR, could he have gotten away with this.